How to develop browser extensions,
Internet Explorer (IE) add-on in VB.NET, C#, C++

Add-in Express™
for Internet Explorer® and Microsoft® .net

Add-in Express Home > Add-in Express for Internet Explorer > Online Guide

Why Add-in Express for Internet Explorer?

The Microsoft IE SDK gives developers the ability to extend Internet Explorer with Browser Extensions. This term includes features such as shortcut menu extensions, custom IE toolbars, Explorer bars, and Browser Helper Objects (BHOs). Further on, we will use the term "add-on" instead of Browser Extensions.

When creating Internet Explorer add-ons (IE Browser Extensions) with Add-in Express, you overcome the basic problem – building your solutions into the IE application. Based on the True RAD paradigm, Add-in Express saves the time that you would have to spend on research, prototyping, and debugging numerous issues when creating an add-on for a COM-based application in Visual Studio.

Add-in Express provides you with easy-to-use tools for programming version-neutral, secure, isolated, managed, and deployable extensions for Internet Explorer:

Managed IE add-ons. You can develop managed Internet Explorer extensions in all programming languages of Visual Studio .NET - VB, C#, C++.
Isolated IE add-ons. Add-in Express loads add-ons into separate application domains. Therefore, they do not have a chance to break down Internet Explorer.
Version-neutral IE add-ons. The Add-in Express programming model and its core are version-neutral. That is, you develop one add-on that will work in Internet Explorer 6, IE7 and IE8.
Deployable IE add-ons. Add-in Express automatically supplies you with a setup project making your solution ready-to-deploy.